LATE SPRING, MONHEGAN  Urgent old ferry girl. determined through the rollers hurled at her from Nova Scotia. Never ending engine drumbeats on, surging through suffocating fog. Holding the gunnels to feel your pulse– deliver me up to Monhegan.  First step on is surrender. Second step on is the end of measured time.  The innocence of […]

From Staithes, in Yorkshire so we have found a substitute, not quite perfection, just serene approximate not quite an island—not an isle at all unless one thinks of isolation as the definition. Hard to get there—isn’t that enough?—dense with evacuees from cities. Cliffs, and rock-pools, August light relentless, probing, honest, intimate the gulls scream day […]

ISLAND COTTAGE for Frances Vaughan  Over the years and many visits, since no one was at home, imagination was my entry, allowed me morning coffee  on the small front deck, the privilege of touching down lightly, lingering there.  Today an invitation came from the poet whose cottage it happens to be. Inside, it is trig […]